Mrs. Ferrers, from her opposite seat at the oval table, had a full view of her husband’s demeanour, across the roses and maidenhair ferns and old Derby crimson and purple dessert dishes. It was rather trying to her to see that he devoted himself entirely to Daphne during the pauses of the meal; and that, while he as in duty bound provided for all Mrs. Turchill’s corporeal needs, and was solicitous that she should do ample justice to his wines and his dishes, he allowed her mind to starve upon the merest scraps of speech dropped into her ear at long intervals. Nor was Edgar much better behaved to Mrs. Ferrers, for he sank into such a slough of despond at finding himself separated from Daphne, that his conversational sources ran suddenly dry, and Rhoda’s lively inquiries about the plays and pictures he had just been seeing elicited only the humiliating fact that she, who had not seen them, knew a great deal more about them than he who had. ‘What did you think of the Millais landscape?’ she asked. ‘Was there a landscape by Millais? I thought he was a portrait painter.’ This looked hopeless, but she tried again. ‘And Frith’s picture; you saw that of course.’ ‘No, I didn’t,’ he replied, brightening; ‘but I saw the people looking at it. It was immensely good, I believe. There was a railing, and a policeman to make the people move on. My mother was delighted. She and another lady trod on each other’s gowns in their eagerness to get at the picture. I believe they would have come to blows, if it hadn’t been for the policeman.’ ‘And there was Miss Thompson’s picture.’ ‘Yes; and another crowd. That is the sort of picture mother enjoys. I think the harder the struggle is the better she likes the picture.’ Gerald and Madoline were sitting side by side, talking as happily as if they had been in Eden. All the world might have heard their conversation—there were no secrets, there was no exchange of confidences—and yet they were as far away from the world about them, and as completely out of it, as if they had been in the planet Venus, rising so calmly yonder above the willows, and sending one tremulous arrow of light deep down into the dark brown river. For these two Mrs. Todd’s most careful achievements were as nothing. Her _sole au gratin_ might have been served with horse-radish sauce—or fried onions; her _vol-au-vent_ might have been as heavy as suet-pudding; her _blanquette_ might have been bill-sticker’s paste; her _soufflé_ might have been flavoured with peppermint instead of _vanille_; and they would hardly have discovered that anything was wrong.